Programming Web Services with Perl

Given Perl's natural fit for web applications development, it's no surprise that Perl is also a natural choice for web services development. It's the most popular web programming language, with strong implementations of both SOAP and XML-RPC, the leading ways to distribute applications using web services. But books on web services focus on writing these applications in Java or Visual Basic, leaving Perl programmers with few resources to get them started. Programming Web Services with Perl changes that, bringing Perl users all the information they need to create web services using their favorite language.

Programming Web Services with Perl steers clear of the hype surrounding web services and concentrates on what is useful and practical. The book introduces the major web services standards, such as XML-RPC, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, and shows how to implement Perl servers and clients using these standards. You'll find detailed references on both the XML and SOAP toolkits, and learn when to use one technology in favor of the other. The book is rich with programming examples that you'll find useful well past the learning stage. And, moving beyond the basics, the book offers solutions to problems of security, authentication, and scalability.

Some of the topics covered in the book are:

• HTTP and XML basics
  
• XML-RPC and the toolkits
  
• SOAP and toolkits
  
• SOAP::Lite
  
• Using SOAP with SMTP and other protocols
  
• Advertising and discovering with UDDI and WSDL
  
• The REST methodology
  
• The future of web services
  

Programming Web Services with Perl was written for Perl programmers who have no prior knowledge of web services. You can pick up this book without any understanding of XML-RPC or SOAP and be able to apply these technologies easily, through the use of publicly available Perl modules detailed in the book.

If you're interested in applying XML-RPC and SOAP technologies to distributed programming applications, then Programming Web Services with Perl is a book you'll want to have.

Table of Contents

Preface 

1. Introduction to Web Services
2. HTTP and XML Basics
3. Introduction to XML-RPC
4. Programming XML-RPC
5. Introduction to SOAP
6. Programming SOAP
7. Serving SOAP over HTTP
8. SOAP Services Without HTTP
9. Service Description with WSDL
10. Service Advertising and Discovery with UDDI
11. REST: Representational State Transfer
12. Advanced Web Services Topics
A. XML-RPC Toolkit Programming Reference
B. SOAP::Lite Programming Reference
C. XML-RPC Example Code
D. SOAP Example Code
E. WSDL and UDDI Examples
F. Bibliography and References
Index